“Das Weite suchen.” Photographs from the late GDR and early 1990s

Annette Hauschild moved to Berlin, her ‘dream destination’, in 1989 at the age of 20. She was interested in dance, theatre and museums, and eventually decided to train as a photographer at the Lette Verein. When the Berlin Wall came down, she was drawn to the eastern part of the city. As a freelance photographer, she lived in a squat in Berlin-Mitte and photographed the upheaval of the early 1990s, the rapid transformation of the city and, among other things, the techno scene. Together with other graduates of the school, she founded a photography group. This was followed by commissions for Berlin scene magazines and newspapers.

In 1996, she became a member of the OSTKREUZ agency. She completed Arno Fischer’s master class at the Fotoschule am Schiffbauerdamm. For OSTKREUZ, she curates exhibitions featuring work by photographers from the agency. Her current work includes the exhibition Träum Weiter – Berlin, die 90er (Keep Dreaming – Berlin in the 90s), in which she illuminates the period of upheaval after 1989/90 in Berlin as a tension-filled coexistence of subculture and the construction boom.

Current work, exhibitions and publications: https://www.ostkreuz.de/fotografen/annette-hauschild/

During her photography studies, Christiane Eisler created various series in which she portrayed young people. From 1982 onwards, she photographed the punk scene in Berlin and Leipzig. When she learned that girls from the scene were being taken to a home, Eisler investigated. She obtained a photography permit for the youth work camp in Crimmitschau. During her additional studies, she created the series Jugendzimmer (Youth Rooms) in a new development area in Leipzig.

In 1990, Eisler founded the photo agency transit together with photographer and journalist friends from Bielefeld. They took on assignments for magazines and newspapers. Their work was in demand: politics and everyday life in the East German states (the former GDR) were popular topics in the national print media. She consistently counters her fast-paced work in journalism with her own projects. Together with photographer Silke Geister, she developed the extensive exhibition Luxus Arbeit (Luxury Work) on female workers in industrial companies around Leipzig, which is currently shown in more than twenty locations, mainly in West Germany.

Current work, exhibitions and publications: https://www.fotografie-eisler.de/

Merit Schambach (née Pietzker) began taking photographs as a teenager. In the mid-1980s, an internship led her to the magazine Freie Welt, where she met photographer Detlev Steinberg, who became her mentor. She quickly became part of the Berlin photography scene and met Arno Fischer, among others. Both inspired her to photograph young people her own age. At the age of sixteen, she began her series Jugend in Ost-Berlin (Youth in East Berlin). She was interested in different youth cultures and photographed young people in their private living environments, as well as the residents of squatted houses.

In Berlin-Friedrichshain, Merit Schambach began working on her series Hausbesetzer in Berlin (Squatters in Berlin) in April 1990 and, at the same time, took up photography studies in Leipzig, which were extended by a year due to the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1989, she sold some of her photos of young punks to Junge Welt and Gesellschaft für Fotografie. She also received a working scholarship. After 1989/90, she continued to work as a photojournalist for newspapers and magazines. Cultural promotion projects supported her artistic work.

In 2002, she ended her career as a photographer and founded a company specializing in mustard.

Current work, exhibitions and publications: https://merit-pietzker-fotografie.jimdofree.com/

After completing her studies, Ute Mahler focused on portrait and fashion photography and worked as a freelance photographer for a range of publications, including Sibylle – A Magazine for Fashion and Culture, until it ceased publication in 1995.

After 1990, Mahler worked primarily as a photojournalist for various magazines. She founded OSTKREUZ agency together with six other photographers, which succeeded in attracting the attention of important picture editors. Demand from German and international media companies was high. Mahler travelled throughout Germany for her photo series. In the first few years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she hardly found any time for freelance work. In 1992, an assignment took her to the soup kitchen at the Franciscan monastery in Pankow (Suppenküche Franziskanerkloster Pankow). She captured the themes of poverty and homelessness in a subsequent long-term series about the Berlin homeless theatre, Ratten 07.

Current work, exhibitions, and publications: https://uwmahler.de

Ludwig Rauch encountered resistance with his unadulterated and unsparing photographs of the “Karl Marx” Brigade. They were not printed, and he was banned from publishing in all journalistic media in the GDR. He began photographing for West German magazines and earned his living with photographic work for artists and catalogues. In 1986, Rauch began studying photography at the HGB in Leipzig. In January 1989, he left the GDR. In 1991, he co-founded the art magazine neue bildende kunst, which existed until 1999.

The rise of the violent right-wing scene led him back to East Berlin in 1990. For years, he photographed the right-wing extremist scene, first in Berlin, then throughout Germany.

Current work, exhibitions, and publications: https://ludwig-rauch.com/

Barbara Wolff learned the craft of photography from her father. While still at school, she was already taking press photos for the local newspaper. During her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig (HGB), she specialized in photography. She works as a freelance book designer and creates illustrations for magazines using photomontage techniques.

In 1982, she moved to Sechzehneichen, a village with less than twenty families. The newcomers were quickly integrated into the village. Professionally, she worked for various museums in the area, creating city portraits and etchings.

After several travel applications were denied, she and her boyfriend, later husband, applied for an exit visa in January 1985. A few months later, she was able to leave the country and went to Munich. She met the photographer Stefan Moses, for whom she also worked. In 1990, she began working freelance for the camera company Linhof. It was only after moving to Berlin in 2011 that Wolff returned to devoting herself intensively to freelance projects.

Current work, exhibitions, and publications: https://barbarawolff.eu

Christian Fenger lived in Eberswalde beginning in 1970. A trained metallurgist, he worked at the Eberswalde rolling mill. He was a member of the municipal photography club of the Cultural Association. In addition to his work at the steel mill, he pursued his passion for photography as a factory photographer. Many of his pictures were published in the factory newspaper.

From 1987 onwards, Fenger was the supervisor of the approximately 90 Mozambican workers at the rolling mill. As a passionate amateur photographer, he took around 200 pictures in this role. He photographed the Mozambicans in their accommodation and at leisure events. He set up a photo lab in their dormitory.

From the end of 1989, Fenger documented the forced departure of the migrants. He accompanied the men to the airport. Like many steelworkers, he himself lost his job in 1992 and was unable to find new work.

Documentary filmmaker Thomas Balzer took over the photo collection and handed it over to the Documentation Centre for Migration in Germany (DOMiD) in Cologne.

Tina Bara began photographing as a self-taught artist in 1983. She took pictures of acquaintances and friends, many of whom were artists. She playfully staged their rebellion against political constraints. She lived in Berlin and was active in opposition groups, including Women for Peace (Frauen für den Frieden). Following her first publication in the art magazine ENTWERTER/ODER, she was able to exhibit her work for the first time in 1985 and shortly thereafter began a distance learning course in photography.

At the same time, she worked freelance for the DEFA Studio for Documentary Films, including on the film flüstern & SCHREIEN (1988). In the summer of 1989, she left the GDR. In the 1990s, she also worked briefly as a photojournalist for various alternative magazines and publishers, before soon abandoning these attempts. She was able to continue her freelance work with the support of scholarships and commissions from the Berlin Senate’s social arts promotion program. In 1993, she became a professor at the HGB in Leipzig and continues to teach artistic photography to this day.

Anselm Graubner left the GDR with his family in 1981 at the age of thirteen. In October 1989, he began studying photojournalism in Dortmund. Just a few weeks after starting his studies, the Berlin Wall fell, and he moved to Weimar. There he experienced the fall of communism with friends from the student art and “house renovation” scene and worked as a photographer for the Thüringische Landeszeitung newspaper. During this period of upheaval, doors that had previously been closed opened, only to close again quite quickly. Like many others, Graubner took advantage of these new opportunities. He was able to take photographs at the largest company in the city, the Weimar-Werk. After several racist incidents in the winter of 1990, he documented the working and living conditions of the migrants employed by the company.

In September 1991, Graubner traveled to Russia. He worked for the local newspaper on the Kamchatka Peninsula for three months. He took photographs of the landscape and culture.

Current works:
https://acc-weimar.de/kunstschaffende/a/graubner__anselmanselm_graubner-2053.html

Inspired by his studies at the HGB, Peter Oehlmann is interested in “traces of social transformation in the landscape” in his independent artistic work. He earns his living trough art reproductions and commissions for historical preservation documentation.

After 1990, the need to earn money with photography grew. He switched to photojournalism, which was a complete reorientation. Editors initially commissioned him to take pictures of the spirit of optimism in the country, and later of protests against the liquidation of industrial and agricultural businesses. Oehlmann became increasingly dissatisfied with producing catchy, illustrative images. He therefore sought other sources of income. Together with colleagues, he founded the ZeitOrt working group. Among other things, they produced documentaries on architecture and urban development in Berlin. He had to put his freelance work on hold for a long time.

Current work, exhibitions, and publications: https://peteroehlmann.de/

Jürgen Matschie’s interest in the culture and landscape of his native region of Lusatia led him to professional photography. He gave up his initial technical career and switched to Sorbian cultural work. He organizes photo exhibitions and initiates artistic projects, including ones on open-cast lignite mining. This gave rise to his own long-term project on mining work and the dimensions and structures of landscapes shaped by open-cast mining. He is particularly interested in life with and from coal. His graduate thesis dealt with everyday life in a village that had to make way for coal mining. From then on, he repeatedly produced series on the disappearance of villages and regions.

After 1989/90, Matschie worked as a freelancer and took on commissions from museums, publishers, and architectural firms. Lusatia remained the dominant theme in his freelance work.

Current work, exhibitions, and publications: https://www.juergen-matschie.de/

After several career changes, Joachim Richau began to intensively pursue photography as an autodidact. Despite having to take on commissioned work to secure his livelihood, he soon began to focus on long-term artistic photography projects, which were always conceived as books.

His first major work was the cycle Bilder aus Beerfelde 1984–87 (Images from Beerfelde 1984–87), with which he applied to join the GDR Artists’ Association in 1987. This was followed by further cycles such as Berliner Traum (Berlin Dream), Land ohne Übergang – Deutschlands neue Grenze (Land Without Transition – Germany’s New Border) and finales (‘Abzug der Roten Armee’ (Withdrawal of the Red Army)). From around 1995 onwards, he spent many years working on the six-part biographical work STAMMBUCH (Family Tree), in which he also reflected on his experiences in the pre- and post-reunification period. Since 2005, his work has shifted increasingly towards minimalist, abstract landscape photography, which he produces exclusively in Scandinavia. In 2025, Joachim Richau will hand over his estate to the Deutsche Fotothek Dresden.

Current work, exhibitions, and publications: https://www.joachim-richau.de/info/